Five Minutes With…

Jon Kaase Racing Engines

EM: Jon, you’ve had a background in racing for a long time. How did that transition into becoming a parts manufacturer?

Jon: We built race engines forever and at some point developed a recognized enough name that I wanted to start selling a few parts to supplement the racing income. In the racing business, you really need more than one profit center. For one thing, it is very seasonable. One of the things that really got us going was the P51 cylinder head for the Ford big-block.

EM: Did you start out building engines for racers before getting into manufacturing parts?

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Jon: From 1977 to 1979, I worked for Dyno Don Nickelson. I was the crew chief and built engines. From 1979 on, I opened my own shop building race engines for mostly Pro Stock cars.

EM: How did the race engine building transition into making parts?

Jon: One of the things that happened is I was working with Ford in those days. I was involved with JMP in producing the Super Cobra Jet heads for Ford. I did the design and testing for that project. Ford didn’t even know it was coming. I just made a lot of changes and improvements to the big-block head, and I showed it to Ford and told them all the dyno stuff. They tested it on their own and were really happy with it. They bought it from us, and we were producing it for Ford. Eventually, Ford found someone to produce the head at a lower cost than we could do it. At that point, we said the heck with it; we did some improvements on the head and built new patterns and came out with our own head called the P51 and started selling them ourselves.

EM: What were the difficulties in transitioning from making the heads for Ford to selling them yourselves?

Jon: Really, it was mostly just getting the word out that we had a nice cylinder head. We did a little advertising, but one of the magazines picked it up and gave us publicity. We had a presence on some of the Internet sites, plus word of mouth worked to make people aware of what we were doing early on. The P51 has always sold pretty good, and it always sells a little more every year. The heads work well on a standard bore engine, and with a racier combination like a 540-cid engine we tested, we’ve gotten 940 hp through them with no porting to the head or manifold.

EM: From the P51, you have progressed to making other parts. Can you give us some insight on the chronology of developing other parts?

Jon: We started making an oil pump because all of the pumps on the market are copies of the factory pump, and the factory pumps break off. They resonate and break, and that is a real problem. We came out with a small-block cylinder head that we sold through Jegs. It was a canted valve head that fits a Windsor block. It looks like a Windsor head, and the exhaust and intake bolts on. That program evolved to the P38 small-block head we sell now, but I have to say it remains a product line we are yet to really ramp up.

EM: What was the next big move into manufacturing?

Jon: I didn’t have a big plan spelled out, but the next thing we did was the Boss 429. I was driving home from the Engine Masters competition back in 2007, and I thought, I’d like to run a Boss 429 in the Engine Masters Challenge. A lot of the stuff we build is similar to the Ford Boss, and we used the passenger car Boss 429 parts back in the 1980s. I have been working on these engines for over 30 years. The factory Ford heads are pretty weak, and they are not good performance heads—they fall apart and crack.

I figured that if I was going to run a Boss in the Engine Masters, I would have to build our own heads. It was only about two weeks after the Engine Masters competition, and I had already met with the pattern makers. We started doing a bunch of testing. We built the prototype heads and started doing a bunch of dyno work and figured it all out. Then I had patterns built for production. We updated the porting and the chamber, but we kept true to the exterior appearance and the positioning of the original heads.

EM: When you came out with the Boss Nine, you had to go much further than just the cylinder heads. You had to come to terms with the complete package. Is that correct?

Jon: Right, it wasn’t just the head. We had the head, the valve covers, two different intake manifolds, and the rockers. We had to get gaskets made and stuff like that to make a package that can be compatible with a factory or aftermarket 429/460 block. Most of the time when guys buy the parts, it is either a complete top end or complete engines.

At the time, we didn’t think too much about building complete engines, but we have built a lot of them over the last few years. We use aluminum blocks or the Ford Racing blocks. We had about 40 new NOS 460 blocks, and we used every one of them to build the Boss motors. I’d say about half of the guys we sold the parts to use production passenger car blocks. We have a dyno test engine that is based on a reconditioned passenger car block that is making over 900 hp we have been using for 13 years. That goes to show how strong those blocks were.

EM: How would you characterize a customer who would be interested in the Boss Nine?

Jon: There are a couple of different kinds of guys. Some of them are guys about my age who always wanted one since high school. With these parts available, they finally have the chance to build one. We also sell quite a few to high-end hot rod builders, usually complete engines that go into high-profile cars.

EM: Where has the parts development gone from the introduction of the Boss Nine?

Jon: Going back to the Boss Nine, we had the four-barrel intake manifold first, but then we built the stack injection manifold. We bought a couple of used three-axis CNC machines to expand our manufacturing capacity. We don’t use the CNC for the heads, but we machine all of our intake manifolds and valve covers.

EM: Are there other items in the works?

Jon: I have a couple of other things we have been working on. We have a billet aluminum oil pump for the big-block Ford. It is a gear pump, like on a big-block Chevy, and it is an inch and half higher so you can get rid of the big pocket in the front of the pan. It works better than the original G-rotor pump. With a wet sump, you can run a lot of crankcase vacuum in it without cavitating the oil, so it can make more power. If you put that pump and a vacuum pump on, you can make an extra 20 to 30 hp. The main reason we built this pump is to let you make the oil pan shallower in the front, so when guys build those hot rod cars, they can lower the engine in the front without hitting the steering racks.

I also have a fuel-injected intake manifold we are developing for both the Boss Nine and P51. It is kind of like the Cobra R manifold we ran on the 2013 Engine Masters mod motor. It sits lower than a carburetor, has a cross-ram look to it, and a cover over it. We have that in testing already, and it is way better than any four-barrel manifold.

EM: Where do you think the aftermarket parts are going as far as performance parts?

Jon: I really don’t know. Certainly, the electronics are more and more popular. It seems like some of the smaller engines are not as popular any more. Whether a small- or big-block, it looks like it is leaning toward the larger cubic inches. When looking at big-blocks, you are looking at 500 cubic inches or more, or with small-blocks you typically see displacements of well over 400 cubic inches. With all of the parts available these days, it is very easy to do.

EM: You did a phenomenal job with the Ford four-valve at the 2013 AMSOIL Engine Masters Challenge; it has to add to your recognition as an engine builder.

Jon: That was probably one of the top five times in my life. From the start to the finish, everything went exactly as I planned. It doesn’t happen that way most of the time.

EM: We appreciate your insight and congratulate you on your performance at the Engine Masters Challenge.